1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to command and interface control of Operating Administration and Monitoring (OAM) executable routines within software systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Operating Administration and Monitoring (OAM) tools are software-based resources used as administration and/or diagnostic tools for complex processor-based executable software systems, such as software-based unified messaging software systems. A subset of OAM tools includes Real Time Monitoring (RTM) programs, used to monitor and control selected states and processes within the software based system. For example, a given RTM program may generate a real-time display (i.e., “a screen”) of selected parameters during execution of a prescribed process; the RTM program may also provide a diagnostic resource that enables resetting of various states or variables within the prescribed process. Other administration and diagnostic tools include external binary files that execute in response to a procedure call, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents or scripts configured for generating an e-mail message as an alarm in response to a detected event.
Hence, system administrators may attempt to utilize multiple tools within a software system in order to increase the available administration and diagnostic tools for improved system performance. The use of multiple RTM programs and other OAM tools, however, requires the users to remember the names and syntaxes of numerous commands for the respective RTM programs and OAM tools. Hence, an increase in the number of OAM tools would result in the system administrator needing to develop expertise in the command names and syntaxes for the respective OAM tools.
The commonly-assigned, copending application Ser. No. 09/604,880 discloses validation of a generic command relative to a command parse tree. The command parse tree includes multiple elements, each specifying at least one corresponding generic command component and a corresponding command action value. A parser, upon identifying a best match between the command parse tree elements and the received generic command, issues a prescribed command for a selected management program according to the corresponding command format. Hence, a user may control multiple management programs having respective command formats in a manner that eliminates the necessity that the user needs to know detailed command formats and syntaxes of each management program.
The addition of new commands, however, requires maintenance processing for the addition of new elements to the command parse tree. For example, each word in the new command needs to be compared to a dictionary of valid words in the system. In addition, for any new words found, a token number needs to be defined, and the word to token algorithm needs to be modified to include any new word in the string to token encoding.